Love Lies Dead

Love Lies Dead is written in the genre of Domestic Noir. The first few pages lead the reader to expect a love story with a twist, but it is much more. Intrigue, nail biting tension and historical detail all woven in to a fast-moving novel with a credible central character. There are many unexpected twists with an historical background. Not all the characters are what they seem to be at first sight - which is also true of life today as well - but all are credible.

Jenny Bird has married the most thoughtful, loving attentive man. They met at a speed-dating event and married four months later. Life, she feels, can’t get any better. However, when, after two years of marriage, Michael fails to come home, Jenny finds how bad it can be. Michael has always let Jenny know if he’ll be late home or away for a day or two.

In acclimatising to life without him, Jenny starts to investigate her father’s family. A trunk in her parent’s cellar holds items from her great, great, grandmother, including letters she wrote home about her life in service to the Dowager Empress, Maria Feodorovna, mother of Tsar Nicholas II.

Michael, meanwhile, stages a return to Jenny’s life. Over a period of a few days, it soon becomes apparent, to Jenny, that Michael is not the man she thought him to be. Having come back into her life, he suddenly leaves telling her that the home they shared has been broken into and that she needs to stay in her parent’s house, for her own safety.

While he is gone, Jenny finds a letter that she should have received on her 21st birthday from her grandparents, who died before her birthday, that leads Jenny on a treasure hunt in the limestone tunnels under the village her parents live in. Following the clues left by her grandparents, Jenny finds that she is the recipient of some of the missing treasures that disappeared after the downfall of the Russian Imperial Family. She also discovers that her marriage is based entirely on lies.

Michael uses subterfuge and deception to gain ownership of the Russian treasure.